Ultra-efficient houses for the middle class, and no subsidies

A developer in Sacarmento is building ultra-efficient housing aimed at the middle class. Plenty of California houses have solar, but these will have something new _ batteries that can store the power. And the project is entirely financed by private investors and banks. There are no federal subsidies.

A Sacramento developer said it plans to roll out a new, ultra-efficient housing development in midtown this fall where energy bills will be as much as 70 percent lower than normal and the houses will produce more energy than they use.

Such houses are usually sold at the high end of the residential market. Developer Pacific Housing Inc. said the single-family homes will be priced around $300,000. "We feel this is one of the first of this kind of project in the Western region," said Mark Wiese, Pacific Housing's president.

Plenty of recent housing projects in Sacramento have included solar panels, but this one will also have a solar storage system. And unlike other net-zero-energy houses in Sacramento, these won't be financed by government grants. They're entirely funded by private sources.